Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Heads up – effectively offline for now

lkml.iu.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 83 posts

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#31

Post by raesene9 »

madeofpalk wrote: post #18

I cannot imagine losing power for an hour, let alone a week. I grew up in rural Australia and it's completely unfathomable to me that anywhere in the first world could go without power for so long.

Really not that uncommon in rural areas.

I'm in the Scottish highlands (only an hour from Glasgow) and when the winter storms come in, we can be out of power for some hours, there's been a couple of instances in the last year, so not common, but not unheard of either.

That's not a major surprise as the power company often has to fix lines in pretty stormy conditions in thinly populated areas.

Our solution to it has been having a battery which kicks in and can run the house for 12 hours or so.

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#32

Post by fabian2k »

madeofpalk wrote: post #18

I cannot imagine losing power for an hour, let alone a week. I grew up in rural Australia and it's completely unfathomable to me that anywhere in the first world could go without power for so long.

I can't remember the last time I had a power outage, it must have been many years now. And even the few power outages I can vaguely remember were very short, so electronics restarted but you weren't without power for long enough to cause any issues. This is in Germany, and I suspect the fact that all regular power lines are buried helps a lot with reliability here.

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#33

Post by paganel »

soco wrote: post #28
madeofpalk wrote: post #18

I cannot imagine losing power for an hour, let alone a week. I grew up in rural Australia and it's completely unfathomable to me that anywhere in the first world could go without power for so long.

I grew up behind the iron curtain and power outages were a given, twice a day. Freezing temperatures in the apartments as well. But that was the Romanian communism and 50 years ago, not the USA today. Today I'm in rural Switzerland and never experienced outages, so I wouldn't accept arguments like "oh but everybody has outages on the countryside".

> "oh but everybody has outages on the countryside".

Everybody definitely still has outages in the Romanian countryside now, my parents (who live in the countryside somewhere in South-Eastern Romania) did have one for two or three days when there was that freakish snow-storm around last November - beginning of December. Not to mention the constant light flickering, I'm wondering how come all the electrical appliances are still in one piece.

Later edit: I'm pretty sure Switzerland (and most of Western Europe, for that matter) very rarely have weather events like the one from these photos [1]

[1] https://www.dobrogeanews.ro/judetul-constanta-viscol-zapada-...

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#35

Post by alpaca128 »

cactusplant7374 wrote: post #14
tedajax wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond just the charging (lol), whatever happened to allowing inclement weather to slow life down for a few days? Snow days are the universe forcing you to take a break.

What's funny? You charge with batteries. Everyone has batteries these days.

> Everyone has batteries these days

No. And definitely not ones that charge a laptop as those can cost 10x as much.

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#36

Post by j16sdiz »

cactusplant7374 wrote: post #14
tedajax wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond just the charging (lol), whatever happened to allowing inclement weather to slow life down for a few days? Snow days are the universe forcing you to take a break.

What's funny? You charge with batteries. Everyone has batteries these days.

How many batteries you need for a week?

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#39

Post by NikolaNovak »

madeofpalk wrote: post #18

I cannot imagine losing power for an hour, let alone a week. I grew up in rural Australia and it's completely unfathomable to me that anywhere in the first world could go without power for so long.

Majority of power lines in many countries are above ground in the air.

Eastern seacoast areas in Canada and USA frequently lose power due to high winds - tropical storms or hurricanes making landfall. Similarly Winter blizzards.

Thunderstorm do sometimes hit power infrastructure as well.

North American grid is famously interconnected and fragile too. I am amazed at the crews that are rapidly dispatched for broken trees and downed wires and fix it pretty quickly. But if it's a big storm with many outages it'll take some time. In Nova Scotia for example it's not uncommon for some households to be without power for days.

And all bets are off if significant parts of grid are down and we struggle with startup sequences.

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#40

Post by jamesponddotco »

madeofpalk wrote: post #18

I cannot imagine losing power for an hour, let alone a week. I grew up in rural Australia and it's completely unfathomable to me that anywhere in the first world could go without power for so long.

Growing up in the rural zone of Brazil, power outages were a constant issue, which thought me to always keep multiple backups of my data.

Now that I live in a big Brazilian city though, I can't remember the last time it happened. Even when the reserves were low during the pandemic, service did hold.

Post reply on HN